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In the United States, operators like AT&T and Verizon have been streamlining their mobile plan options over the past years. The trend is towards ushering consumers into packages featuring unlimited voice and SMS, with variable mobile data blocks. In Europe and Asia, the number of possible monthly plans is still staggering in most affluent countries.

Alekstra, a company specializing in mobile optimization and diagnostics, recently conducted a survey among Finnish iPhone users to determine what is the most common mistake consumers make in picking a mobile plan. The survey was based on thousands of consumers who used the Ratemizer application in order to find out how to cut their mobile plans to fit the actual consumption level.

80% of the surveyed consumers had a mobile plan that was a mismatch for their actual data, voice and SMS usage. Perhaps the most interesting part of the survey was that 57% of consumers had mobile plans that were too large for their actual usage; only 23% of consumers had mobile plans that were undersized and thus led to overage charges. In the most typical scenario, the consumer had opted for a 750 minute monthly package, while the actual mobile voice consumption was at or below 250 minute level.

Average monthly mobile voice consumption is something most consumers have trouble estimating accurately. The surging popularity of various new messaging systems seems to be eroding the mobile voice usage among Apple's iPhone owners in markets like America and Finland, based on Alekstra data. This may well be why AT&T and Verizon have started shifting their smartphone subscribers towards unlimited voice plans. The US carriers want to be one step ahead of the curve that could lead to declining mobile voice revenues in markets where consumers still have the option to pick a voice minute bucket. It is quite possible that European and Asian operators will start emulating the AT&T/Verizon style family plans over the next two years in order to cope with the threat of consumers downshifting to smaller smartphone voice plans.